It was a cold morning on December 6 when we woke up thinking about what was happening over in Germany and how the war was getting out of control. I had to forget about that when I walked into school. My friends were all sitting at a table when I walked in. I went over to them and asked them what they were going to do after school. But before I could ask my teacher came over to my table and told us that we are lining up to go to class. I went over to my classes line I only had one friend in my class. That was George he also lived down the street. We walked to class all excited because it was a Friday and it was the last day of the week. During homeroom, we just got our books ready for the day. Then the bell rang for the first period and you could already hear the other students yelling in the halls. When we got to the hallway my friend Steven was waiting for me because we all had the first period together. But as the day went on I started to feel sick so by 6th period I didn’t want to do anything after school besides go home and lay down but I knew that all of my friends had plans to do something after school and I didn’t want to miss out. We went into the woods after school and played in this fort that we had made a few months ago. When the sun started to go down we all went home so George and I walked together because of how close our houses were. We both lived the furthest away from the fort and our houses looked out onto the Pacific Ocean. We could see this Navy base that we always thought was so cool. During dinner, my family and I talked about how we had bombed Japan a few months ago. But I wasn’t really paying attention I was focused on eating my dinner it was my favorite meal fish. I always loved dinner on Friday because we always had fish. After dinner, it was very dark out to the point where you could barely see anything. My mom then told me and my other two siblings that it was time for bed. I and my brother shared a room while my oldest brother got his own room. My brother and I would usually talk for a little while but I still didn’t feel all that great so I told him that I was just gonna go to bed. We woke up to roaring boom we got scared because we didn’t know what was happening. At first, we thought something just fell but they we heard another boom and the second one sounded like it came from outside so we looked in the front yard and saw nothing. Then when we looked in the backyard we saw out in the distance a fire but we had no way of helping put it out so I went downstairs to see my parents hugging each other looking out the window to see what had happened. When someone showed up at our house telling us that pearl harbor has been bombed by Japan. About ten minutes after that person told us that we have been bombed we heard another sound just like the last bomb. But we didn’t think that we had been bombed again until there was more smoke and the fire got brighter and larger. When we all showed up to school later that morning we were told to go home because it was too dangerous to be there. So I walked home with George and asked him what he thought happened when the bomb went off.

George stated, “ I thought that it was just a tree that fell until I looked outside.”

When I arrived at home with my brother my parents told us that we had to go more towards the middle of town and it wasn’t safe to be in our home because we didn’t know if there would be another bomb dropped on Pearl Harbor. So we had to go back towards the school to get away from the fire and another possible fire. They made a spot for families that lived on the coast in the gym floor of the school.

“You guys will just be here for the night.” A police officer told us from the doorway. You could feel the sigh of relief throughout the gym. Many people were disappointed that this happened and other people were still shocked about what had happened a few hours ago. Then George and I went into town to get some snacks and drinks for the night that they were staying in the gym. When walking back to the school we saw a man in a navy suit you could tell he was sad by the look on his face.

When we approached him I asked, “ Sir what happened earlier this morning”?

He replied, “The Japanese bombed us because of what we had done to them by bombing their town.”

George asked the soldier “ Will everything be ok around here”

The soldier answered in a low voice “ I hope I don’t really know what to expect now that the Japanese had done that.”

We then asked, “ Were you over there when Japan dropped the bomb on Pearl Harbor”?

He told us “ I was supposed to be over there but I woke up late so I wasn’t able to get there on time but I know lots of people that had been over there when the bombing took place they were like brothers to me.”

I then thanked him for his service and told him that we were sorry for his loses and walked away to get back to the school. When we got back to the gym my mom was asking me about where we had been and if anything else had happened.

I told her “ Nothing else happened and we were late getting back because we were talking to a Navy soldier about what had happened over at Pearl Harbor. The next morning they told us that we could go home and we would not have school for a few weeks because we didn’t know if they would bomb us again. The days that I had off I thought about what if I was one of those soldiers or if I got bombed like those soldiers that were working at Pearl Harbor.